The Hurt Locker

Opening Remarks

I really enjoyed this film. At first I thought this film was going to be boring and did not want to watch it but once I did I got into it and did not want to stop watching it. This is one of my favorite films; it was put together well.

Context

This film took place in the Middle East and is based on the war going on in Iraq. The director of this film is Kathryn Bigelow; she was the first women to win an Oscar. It was filmed only 3 miles away from Iraq to keep the authenticity of the locations. During filming, three, four or more hand-held super 16mm cameras were used to film scenes in documentary style. Part of the shooting took place during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which is observed by fasting from sunrise to sundown. The expression "the hurt locker" is a preexisting slang term for a situation involving trouble or pain. The film The Hurt Locker relates to is Taken; both main characters do what they enjoy most even if it gets in the way of their family. A thematic thread is peole who crave the adrenaline rush will do anything to obtain it.

Setting, Costume & Acting

The costumes were pretty realistic. The soldiers' uniforms emphasize how dangerous war is. The uniforms and civilian clothes shows the difference of their worlds. While the civilians live there, the soldiers are there to fight and serve their country. The actors were great at conveying their characters. Srgt. James did the best; he seemed liked he was not scared and that he enjoyed what he was doing. The actors were believable; they showed the emotions that soldiers fighting in Iraq would. The setting was very dangerous but Digelow wanted to get the sense of realism of war for this film. The production design is very realistic. It is made up of all the weapons and machinery. Without all the weapons the film would not be realistic.

Cinematography & Lighting

The style of The Hurt Locker is realistic; it is showing the audience an issue people go through everyday although we may not see it everyday. What also gives this film the realistic feel is the use of handheld camera work. Most Hollywood films are not handheld so intense fight or battle scenes do not feel as realistic but in this film they use handheld work which does

not seem as fake. The camera angles in this film vary from scene to scene. The cinematographer does a very good job with coverage in this film. The use of close ups show the stress and emotions that are going on inside the characters' minds. The cinematographer uses many different shots in each scene. First they start with an establishing shot that is a long shot then go in closer for dialogue scenes or to show how a character is feeling. There are not many bright colors in this film, they are mostly dark colors that reresent the danger and fear of war. The director uses mostly close ups in this film to get the audience to pay attention to the little details of war rather than the big picture. There are not many long shots in this film because the director wanted to pay attention to the details.

Editing

The style of the editing is quick cuts. The end product of the film was smooth and all the shots transitioned well with each other. There were no cuts or scenes that seemed unrealistic like some Hollywood war movies. An example of manipulation of time and speed in this film is in the beginning of the film. There are about 3 different times they show the explosion of the bomb and the different angles. The length of the cuts varied; some were short, for example the war scenes, and some were long, such as when the characters are depressed. There were no narrative techniques in this film; i think the director chose to have it this way so it emphasizes their life in the war and does not take attention away from what is going on at that time.

Score

Repeated motifs throughout this film are the sound of guns, bombs and the stress or frustration in the soldiers' voices when they want to go home. Some foley sounds are the bombs and guns. These were most likely made in a studio. This film is synchronous; we know that when a gun is shot that we are going to then hear the sound of the gun. An example of sound effects is when the first bomb goes off. They isolate the sound of the sand from all the other sounds in the scene for emphasis and they do that for the sound of the car, sound of the bomb exploting and the soldier breathing until the last shot when they then put all the sounds together.

Script

There is no narration in this film, but dialogue between the characters is used throughout the fil. This film is character driven because the characters' emotions and actions are what got them through to the next day. The dialogue between the characters is believable and can be how real soldiers talk in war. Their dialogue is informal but that can be seen as emphasis to how stressful it is to fight in war for the soldiers. The use of humor in this film shows that the soldiers, although they are putting their lives on the line for their country everyday, are just like everyone else and need a good laugh to relieve their stress and frustration. I think that "hurt locker" really means that whether someone likes to fight in war or does not, they are always going to be in pain whether it is physically or mentally. They are putting their lives in danger to not only fight for their lives but their family's and strangers' lives.

Genre

The features that show this film is an action film/war film are the bombs, machinery, guns, and the people that are killed. This film can also be a dramatic film because of all the depression the soldiers have to go through when they lose a soldier. Also because they have to be away from their friends and families for so long to fight for their country.

Closing Remarks

I did not really like the ending. The decision Srgt. James makes ties back to the quote from the beginning of the film. War is James' drug; James has a talk with his son, although his son cannot understand and is telling him that the only thing he loves is war. Life at home is too boring for him and does not have any excitement like war does.

Short Documentary

The documentary I chose was True Life I Can't Have Sex. The objective of this documentary is to show how something so small in life can scare and affect women's relationships. The three women in this documentary cannot have sex because of a physical condition. These 3 women cannot control their pelvic muscules so it hurts them to have intercourse. This affects their everyday lives because it causes them anxiety whether their boyfriends are going to leave them because of this condition or if they can even have a normal, intimate relationship. It also causes them stress in their relationships because Tali's boyfriend is getting tired and fed up because of this condition and that causes them to have relationship problems, that most likely led to their break up. Tamra was able to find a way to stop her pelvic pain and is not going to try to date until she can control her pain after surgery. Tess and her boyfriend worked together to try to fix this condition and her boyfriend is working with her and being understanding, which she is happy for because she does not think any other guy would put up with it.
The camera work in this documentary was pretty static. There were some changes in angles but it was mostly made up of stationary shots. They also used photos throughout the documentary. When the women went to their therapist appointments the camera would just follow the women around. The was no really variety in camera work.

The editing brought the audience in and is what made the audience pay attention. The editing style was not boring; it was very interesting because it went from one girl to another then went back to the first girl. This style did not divide the documentary up by girl but rather time in their lives. It showed all their struggles at one time then their success at one time. It also was interesting because you were able to see the different points of views of the women and people in their life. Although the women in this documentary are going through the same thing the effects of it are different. One girl is alone trying to find a relationship, another girl is struggling with her boyfriend and their relationship, and the other girl is able to be open with her boyfriend and he is supportive of her. The sound design was calm. It did not distract the audience from the documentary and was very subtle.

Documentary Pre-Pro

Purpose: to try make the audience feel what true adrenalin really is.

Contacts: We would go to Fort Funston and talk to some of the hang gliders there and possibly document one of them and have them work with us.

Interview questions: Name? Born and raised? How long have you been hang gliding? What do you feel from when you fly through the air? Does this sport have any affect on your family relationships? Injuries from hang gliding? How do you find the strength to jump of a cliff with a wing attached to your back?

General flow: the documentary will start out with some great b-roll of the person hang gliding and then it will move on to the interview as he gets deeper and deeper into the subject, by him telling us how and when he got involved with this perticular subject. The guy that we interview will have to gobeyond the surface and actually tell us the driving force that makes him do these types of dangerous stunts. As the film progresses we want to focus less on the actual hobby of hand gliding and more on how hand gliding is esential to his way of living.

Shot list: - camera mounted on top of the hang glider pointing down – shots flying overhead – landscapes of Fort Funston – focus on little details of the assembly of the hang glider.

Baraka Film Response

The film Baraka had nice shots but it is not the type of movie I would watch on my own time. There was a little amount of dialogue, which is not the type of movies I enjoy to watch. What I did like about the film was the use of coverage and the different locations they shot this movie on. The shots were beautiful which is what kept the audience into the film. It allowed the audience to focus on the locations and shots rather than what is going on in the film. It also allows the audience to take a second and appreciate what we have in nature. I think this film is titled Baraka, meaning breath in Islam, because the shots in the film make the audience take a second and just breathe. I think that this film expresses a critique of the modern world because in a part of the film it shows city life and how busy and fast things are but in the parts in the nature the shots are slowed down to show how people there appreciate the world and what is happening around them. The people of the modern world do not take a second to stop to see what is around them since they are so busy. The message I get from the film is to stop and take a breathe and look around to see what is happening around you. Also the message I get from this film is to appreciate nature and take a second out of your day to notice what you would not notice if you were rushing to do an errand. The absense of voice and text in the film Baraka emphasized to the audience to just notice what is going on around you rather than paying attention to the story line. The absence of dialogue in this film is important because it forces the audience to pay attention to the shots rather than just listening to what the characters are saying. Some possible interpretations of the monk could be that the monk represents purity whereas the cigarette factory represents contamination. The film suggests that religion and spirituality are the way to life. The kind of social statement the film Baraka maked with the people on the refuse heap and the images of the poor is that not all of today's society is equal based on how different people run things. We watched the film Baraka to teach us that a movie can be successful without dialogue and that messages can be conveyed without the characters talking. This film does make me want to travel; it shows all the beautiful nature thatt people would not notice if they do not take time out of their day to slow down and see what is happening around them.

Commentary

For this film I was an actress and an editor; while filming I tried to pay attention to continuity errors and try to limit them as much as possible. This was hard to do since we were more worried about the cinematography and story line than the little details. Problems that occurred in my area of responsibility were not having a lot of takes of one scene, not being able to limit more continuity errors and not being able to convey the storyline better. To make up for the problems that occurred while filming I tried to limit the amount of continuity errors in my edit and show the best shots of footage we had. I also put a voice over in the opening scene to try to convey the story better. Problems that occurred in the film as a whole were we could not convey our storyline with the number of scenes we had and there were many continuity errors. Our group did not try to solve the problems that occurred while we were filming and only focused on the cinematography. A group member wanted to leave our 5th scene out of the movie because he did not think it was necessary and was just focusing on the shots rather than the actual film. A problem we had as a group was time; there was limited time we all could shoot at. My group also was not worried about the continuity errors and did not listen to me when I would point out a continuity error. Also a group member only got one good take of each scene so we did not have much to work on in the edit. Things we could avoid with future films are limiting the number of continuity errors, get more than one good take of each scene and focus more on the storyline than the shots. Some successes we have in our film are our opening scene and the amount of coverage. Our group had a lot of different angles and shots. We tried to incorporate many different shot techniques in our film “Skin Deep”.

1.Genre Connections
We wanted to have the same genre of the film “Amelie” which is romantic comedy. We wanted to incorporate the type of relationship that Amelie and Nino had. It was not conveyed through our film because of the lack of storyline. We wanted to portray Amelie’s character to our main character, which was the guy. Our film is about a boy who finds a girl’s wallet and tries to give it back to her but also get her to notice him. When he first realizes that the girl in the library was the girl that lost her wallet he gets distracted. After he puts down his phone he notices she is gone and cannot find her. He then goes home and looks through all his yearbooks trying to find out what her name is. After he finds out her name he was suppose to notice she was on the track team and that was going to be something they had in common, which would make him fall in love with her even more. After that scene it was going to be the tutoring scene which is a coincidence and that is where he gets her to talk to him and he gives back her wallet. This relates back to “Amelie” because Amelie tried to find way for Nino to talk to her and they then fall in love with each other once they meet.

2. Acting/Character
As far as acting goes, I could have acted better in the film; I believe Brandon’s acting was pretty good and believable. We could of done better with acting by taking the filming more serious and trying to make the acting more believable in less takes. We both knew how we wanted the characters to be in the film so it was not difficult to convey how to act in this film. To improve the acting of our actors we can try to be more believable with the tone of our voice and the reaction shots. I think we have good body language throughout the film to portray the character’s feelings.

3. Edit/FX, Techniques or Concepts
I think our shots were done very well. We have a lot of different camera techniques we used throughout our film. I do not think that our shots dragged on too long; they were as long as we needed them to be to convey the message we were trying to send to the audience. Many of our shots did not need much editing besides trimming them and adding some transitions or using match action. I used match action and eye line match a couple of times in my edit.

4. Sound FX
It was a little difficult to find music to match our film. There were a few tracks that matched our film perfectly but they were out played and a lot of people used them in their films for this project. I used a royalty free sound effect of the Internet for the sound of the car since our cinematographer did not use the microphone to get ambient sounds. I also recorded the door opening and closing for the film because the microphone did not pick up on the sound. To make the film more realistic I think we should have had more ambient sounds.

5. Cinematography
The areas I feel like out cinematography could of improved were the continuity errors and making sure our gear is not in the shot. There were a couple of shots were our gear was in the shot which limited the use of that shot. Also I think we could of taken more takes on each scene so we have more footage to work with rather than being limited to the small amount of good footage we have. I think the thing we did well with cinematography was the type of shots we had; we experimented with shots and tried to have coverage with various angles and camera movements.

6. Production Design
Our production design was pretty easy; we filmed at the library, parking lot, conference room and Brandon’s house. It was not difficult to getting access to these locations. We tried to get rid of anything distracting in the background and not have anything stand out that was not important to the film. Something that we could improve was the library scene. We used the librarian in our film and in one shot she was sitting down and then in the next shot she was not in her seat. We could improve the backgrounds of our shots and make sure they are consistent.

7. Your "objective" analysis of the film as a whole
Our film could have been improved a lot just by having that one extra scene to convey our storyline, without it there is no story and makes no sense for how the character tries to get the girl to talk to him. Even with a voice over in the beginning it is hard to try to get the audience to understand our concept. Just by taking one more day to film our movie could have been so much better. With the edit we can try to move things around to try to make the film make more sense but it is very difficult since we are limited with the amount of footage. Overall I believe if we put some more effort into the concept and filming the film could have came out a lot better but since we were limited on filming time and concept ideas it was hard to get our storyline across to our audience. (word count: 1,285)

Rationale

After watching the French film “Amelie”, I wanted to incorporate the style of Magical Realism. By making my film “Skin Deep” I was able to incorporate some of the stylistic devices from “Amelie” such as color correction and the genre of romantic comedy. My plan was to film for 4 days and edit one scene each day; then on the last day of editing make the final touches and edit the sound effects. This project was a good idea because it shows how well students can incorporate different film techniques in their individual films. Also by students having to edit their own films it shows each students strengths and weaknesses as an editor.

Short Film Treatment- Romantic Comedy/Magical Realism

Logline: A girl stays home to do all the chores for her family every weekend, while everyone else just sits around or goes out; they are not thankful for what she does and she tells them how she feels taken for granted.

Opens to a girl separated from her family; all of them are sitting down on the couch eating dinner and watching tv together while she is cleaning the kitchen. Once they are done with dinner; they all just put their plates on the counter and go to bed. She is once again left to clean the mess.

The next day she goes up to her parents and ask if she can go out with a couple of friends tomorrow. Her parents say no because she has to clean up the backyard and garage because her 4 other siblings are going out with their parents to an amusement park that day. She finishes cleaning early and asks if she can go with them and her parents denied her again and made her clean their room.

When they get home she asks how it was and they all just ignored her. She went to her room and started to cry. She started to think to herself why her family does not want to be around her or appreciate what she does for them so she went back to the living room and started yelling at them saying she does all the work around the house and is tired of coming last. Her parents tell her to go to her room and never yell at them again. She goes to her room like her parents said and cry herself to sleep.

The nest day is her birthday. She walks downstairs and the kitchen is a mess from breakfast. There is nothing but scraps left and no one is home but her. She is sad but cleans the mess and gets ready to go eat lunch by herself. Her car is an old, beat up car that stalls when she starts it and the paint is coming off. She then goes shopping by herself and when she gets home her family is just sitting at home watching tv. They then ask her if she could go get dinner, she is upset but does what they ask. When she walks in the house is clean and decorated filled with her friends and family. Her parents thought she deserved a surprise party for everything she did and even got her a new car and new tv for her room.

After the party is over her family cleans the mess while she watches tv in her room. Her family apologizes for how they have been acting in the past and that they will all share the responsibility of cleaning.

Amelie Textual Analysis

Color Correction

In the film, Amelie, there is a lot of use of color correction. Jeunet believes that every shot should be a painting, so he used a lot of highly saturated color correction. In Amelie there were many objects in each shot that was color corrected to stand out and show the magical realism. The colors used most in this film are green, red, yellow and some blue.

Tinting

Throughout the film, tinting is used. Tinting in the film is used to show the characters being joyful in order to get the audience engaged into the film. It is also used in the film to change the lighting of the scenes, so that the color scheme would match throughout the film. This adds to the magical realism because the locations look different than they do in real life. Tinting in this film was used to show and emphasize the character's emotions.

Breaking the 4th Wall

In the film, Amelie continuously breaks the 4th wall and talks to the audience. This helps bring the audience into the emotion of the film and engages them to want to pay attention to the film. Breaking the 4th wall allows the audience to enjoy the fiction as if they were observing real events. Jeunet uses this to show the romantic comedy side of the film. This allows the audience to feel closer to the character since the character is telling the audience their feelings or thoughts directly.

Narration

In the beginning of the film the narrator tells the audience a lot of information in a short period of time. Also information that is random like that Amelie likes to stick her hand in a bag of beans. Narration in this film is used to introduce the characters and quirky things about their personalities. The weird things about the characters mentioned help bring the audience into the film. The dialogue picks up more towards the middle and end of the film; Jeunet uses narration in the beginning of the film so the audience can start a relationship with the characters and understand their personality then use dialogue to back up the narration.

Reverie and the DSLR Revolution

In the film Reverie low key light is used throughout the film which causes a dark and mysterious feeling to the audience. In this shot, the lights are not focused all the way which causes the viewers to pay attention to the light that is in this scene. The light stands out in this scene because everything else is dark and does not have any emphasis.

In this next shot the water is dark and all the buildings are lit up. This shot draws attention to all the buildings and is a very nice shot. The lights from the building are reflected onto the water.

In this shot of the woman, there is not much light except in the corner of the frame. This distinguishes the difference between the foreground, midground, and background. The silhouette of the girl gives off a mysterious feeling to the audience; the shot pans up and then more light is revealed into the shot. I like this shot because the light in this shot gradually fades the further left you look at the frame.

In this shot the rack focus is of the man's feet and rest of his body. I like this shot because his feet are not in focus but the rest of the shot is and it draws attention to his face and not just his body as a whole.

The DSLR Revolution

In the Job Security film, it shows another side of the trunk that the key the girl found goes to.

In this shot, it has to T.Vs of which the security officers can see. The one to the right is of the trunk that was introduced in the previous film, The Cabbie. This shot is important because it introduces the characters, the officers, as well as the problem they are going to come across later on in the film.

In this shot the characters are introduced, which are the 2 security officers. Just by their appearances you can get a sense of what kind of person they are. The bigger one is lazy which is shown later on in the film when he is just listening to his iPod not paying attention to what is happening at the site. The skinny officer is the one who is taking precausions and wanting to see what is happening to the trunk.

In this shot, there is a sense of relief because the officer was in the back of the trunk and his partner was killed by the man driving the trunk. But there is a sense of suspense because he wants the taxi driver to follow the man to see what is in the trunk.

Treatment

Title: The Night Out
Genre: Comedy

A married couple has 4 children, one 6 year old boy, a 7 year old girl, a 1o year old boy and a 13 year old girl and are busy all the time with their children. The wife is a wedding planner and the husband is a doctor. One day they called their friends to have a double date to have time to theirselves. They made the plans a weeks in advance. While they are on the phone you can hear children running in the background and a glass falling and breaking and the husband yelling.

Their week goes by normal for their family. Until the next day the youngest son cuts his oldest sister's hair. The parents don't care that much but the teenager girl freaks out and starts to scream when the wife's boss is at their house planning how they are going to design the wedding they are working on. A her boss walks out because the 6 year old and 13 year old are throwing things all over the house screaming. The daughter won't stop complaining about her hair so her mother takes her to get it fixed. Since her husband is at work she has to take all the kids. When they are at the salon all the kids want to sit in the same seat so they fight over one chair when there are 5 other chairs. So they all settle down in different chairs and leave after the haircut.

Once they get home they all are hungry and want to eat so they make food and make a big mess with penut butter and ice cream all over the counters and floor. The husband finally gets home and slips in the ice cream and gets ice cream all over him.

The next day is their date with their friends. The both get home from work early to get ready and find a babysitter. They call the babysitter at 7 pm to see where she is because their date is at 8. The babysitter is lost and is about 45 minutes away from their house. Once she arrives to their house they say goodbye and leave. About 5 minutes later the wife realizes she forgot her purse and they have to go back. When they get home to get her purse the kids have the babysitter tied up so the parents let her loose and head back to the car, when they get to the car they try to open the door when they notice it is locked. They see the car keys on the passanger's seat and have to try to open the car. Once they get the door open and start the car the car will not start so they have to jump it. After the jump the car they head back to the resturant and when they get there and try to find their reservation the worker says that they gave away their table because they were more than an hour late. They called their friends to see where they are and their friends totally forgot about the date and got ready to go out to a movie with them. When they get there the married couple go to pay for their tickets and realize the wife's wallet is not in her purse, but luckily their friends offered to pay for them.

What's your Dramatic Moment

A teenager boy, John, likes this girl, Nicole, and has liked her since they were in middle school and they are now in the 11th grade. He and she are just friends and he always tries to get her attention but she does not because she has a boyfriend. He one day gets the nerve up to talk to her when her boyfriend comes up and threatens him not to talk to his girlfriend, so he just walks away. One day they get into a big fight and John decides to try to cheer her up; he does and she asks if he would like to hang out with her after school and he accepts. While they are hanging out she starts to realize he has always been there for her and feels like she is falling for him. While walking home she leans in to kiss him and he gets all happy and excited when the sprinklers in the park turn on and get him wet. Then once they are at her doorstep she leans into to kiss him again when her boyfriend pulls up into the driveway and she sees him and runs over to her boyfriend and he is there left alone again. The things that will emphasize their dramatic moment are sweat running down his face, the girl leaning into him and holding his hand, close up on their faces and dim lighting.

Plots that Kill

One film that used the coming of age plot idea to develop their film was The Guardian. In the film, the character tried to act like he was the best guardian out in his field because he beat all the records. He and his instructor did not get along until the instructor had to go in an save him. The instructor gave up his life for him and that is when he realized what guardians' jobs are. Another film that has used this idea to develop their film was Avatar. The main character did not have any intensions of helping the avatars before he went to their world but once he lived what they live, he realized that is where he belongs and tries to help them save their world.

A potential story that can be developed like this film is about a young man that looks down at a homeless man. The homeless man use to be on top of the world until his son was diagnosed with cancer; the man spent all his money for operations to cure his son's cancer but none of it worked; he tried everything he could until he went broke and a few days later his son died. The boy does not know anything about this man's life until he is faced with his dad getting stabbed and the homeless man helps them and that's when the young man realizes his job is to help this homeless man because he did not do anything wrong to the society all he wanted to do was save his son's life. By using this story I am being unique because the characters did not have any connections before the homeless man helps the young man's dad.

Editing Demo Critique

1. Concept/ Script
I think my editing concept demos do a good job of demonstrating the concepts. They consist mostly of the concept with of course other concepts as well. A problem I had with the demos was time. We did not have much time to shoot because our schedules conflicted. Another problem was that we both had our own ideas and could not illustrate it to each other so it did not come out as well as it could of.

2. Camera Work
Our shots for the demos were average. If we had more time they could of came out better. A problem we had with the camera work was we thought that the shot was long enough but in reality when we went to edit it was difficult because we did not have enough shots. We crossed the 180 degree rule in the eye line match demo but it was not that bad. We did not have a very creative shot but the one I liked the most was the match action cut when Dee knocks over Tanya's books.

3. Edit
A challenge I had with the edit was not having enough shots to chose from. Another challenge was having boring angles because we did not focus on coverage. In the edit for our eyeline match demo I had to make sure where they looked was where the camera was going to. It was a difficult edit mainly because of the amount of shots we had.

Solitude

In the trailor Solitude I took 3 screenshots that I thought were interesting.

My first screenshot was a pitcure of a phone on a stool by itself. I picked this screenshot because it was isolated and the trailor was about how the characters were isolated from everyone and how their neighbors were dying. This is a good placement in the shot because it emphasizes the phone and what it does to the plot. When one of the characters pick up the phone the music and sound effects get more dramatic. This is a symbol of their isolation.

Another screenshot I took from the trailor was the empty highway. This is also a symbol of the characters isolation. I chose this screenshot becasue it is set up nicely; it does not emphasize anything but the empty highway. I also chose it because it makes the highway seem long and that the characters' help is far and it shows that barely anyone comes across this road. With the telephone poles going down the highway it creates an illusion that the highway is longer than it actually is.

I chose this screenshot because it makes the character seem inferior to what is after him. This is an interesting shot because in the trailor it does not reveal what the character is looking at so it makes the trailor more interesting and brings the audiences' attention in. This is a teaser shot and the dim lighting in this scene makes it mysterious. The dense shadows on the character's face gives this shot a sense of darkness which is good with horror films.

Avatar

I think since James Cameron thought of the movie in advance, he did not face too many difficulties but, as many of us know that, making a movie is not simple, even if it is all planned out. One challenge that I believe would be one of the greater challenges was coming up with all the high technology used in the movie. I think Cameron did a very good job on making the technology seem like what it will be like in the future.

By creating the Vault, Cameron was able to create Pandora. Before he could start filming and laying out each scene of the movie, he had to imagine the world for the characters. To think about how the world of the avatars' is going to be would be an overwelming experience, considering Cameron had to make the world believable. Because of the 3D technology the movements were a lot more smoother and believable.

Performance capture is where an actor's movements and expressions are electronically tracked and translated into computer generated imagery (CGI) to bring a film character to life. Motion capture is the process of recording movement and translating that movement onto a digital model. With performance capture the actor gets a better feeling for what they have to act rather than in motion capture.

Cameron and the Avatar film producers spent $150 million on this movie. The creation of the new trechnology in this movie might have had it harder to gather enough money for News Corp. I do not think how much money spent on a film changes the outcome of the message the audience gets from thet movie. Even though Cameron spent $150 on Avatar it does not change the message of the movie. However, if a movie is a very low budget film and you can tell it is then it might affect the outcome of the audiences' reaction because they might not enjoy it as much because there was not or did not look like enough effort into the film.

I believe Avatar does show characteristics Americans have. For example, Americans say it is a free country we can do whatever we want and say whatever we want, but in reality we cannot. Americans cannot go around the world or even the US thinking they run the place because there would be no boundaries. I believe Cameron was trying to show how Americans have acted in the past and have tried to suck people into thinking they are doing what is best for everyone but really only thinking of what is best for them. However, I do think this is not original becasue there are films like this. For example, Pocahontas.